1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an apparatus for extracting fruit juice from citrus fruits which have a rind, which apparatus includes a supply container and a processing station adapted to receive single fruits individually from the supply container, which processing station includes holding members adapted to grip and hold one fruit, which holding members are located coaxially opposite each other and are moveable in an axial direction, and includes a double side rasping head.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
For the extraction of juice from a fruit by using a rasping head which in the most simple application is utilized in apparatuses which are common for domestic use, and specifically either by a manual rotating of the bisected fruit and exertion of pressure against a cone shaped rasping head, or by means of a mechanized apparatus having a rasping head which automatically begins to rotate upon exertion of pressure against the stationary held fruit half, provides the best results in recovering flavorful juice. With other known and fully mechanized apparatuses having an automatic feed and removal of the empty rinds, the bisected fruits are pressed out by means of sort of a pistle, or holes are cut out of the rind and the juice is pressed out through these holes by means of pressure applied onto the rind, which always leads to the effect that parts of the rind and also bitter constituents reach the fruit juice and influence its flavour quite negatively, the extent of this negative influence depending on the type of fruit and other factors.
European application EP 03 76 390 A 1 discloses an apparatus for a mechanized extracting of fruit juices from citrus fruits which, however, has the drawback that it is only possible to process fruits which are sorted in accordance with their size, or where the holding members of the apparatus for holding the fruit must be exchanged, respectively. Furthermore, the fruit is held by means of a vacuum in the rotating holding members, which, due to the rotation and simultaneous capability of an axial displacing of the holding members, necessitates rotatable vacuum connections and also flexible driving shafts. The extremely intrinsic structured apparatus which is quite prone to breakdowns is thereby not at all used for a rubbing out or rasping out, resp. of fruit halves, the rind of the rotating fruit is thereby rather cut in a groove like fashion and thereafter the entire fruit is taken out of the previously cut rind by means of a rotating peeling knife having an offset semicircular shape and thereafter only the rest of the fruit pulp remaining in the two half shells is rasped off by means of a double sided rasping head. Because this known apparatus operates according to the complicated principle of separating the rind from the entire fruit, instead of merely rasping fruit halves and even so cannot process unsorted fruits, it is specifically not suitable for the processing of cheap wares specifically suitable for an economic extraction of fruit juices,as unsorted fruits are cheaper.
Because citrus fruits such as oranges have quite differing diameters, the method of extracting juice from such citrus fruits by a rasping with a fully mechanized apparatus which necessitates only the filling of a supply container and which allows to simply run the extracted fruit juice without any further manual labor off the tap has not yet been solved satisfactory, while the already mentioned, technically more simpler solvable pressing out method has the drawback of a negative influence on the flavour due to bitter constituents of the rind and, furthermore, the drawback of a less complete recovery of the juice.